


Tell Me Something, Boy

by Crait



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Fix-It, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crait/pseuds/Crait
Summary: Her sense of timing is flawless. (Or: Ally walks back in.)





	Tell Me Something, Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-typical content warnings for implications of alcoholism, depression, addiction, and suicidal behavior. There's not really a believable fix for them that can be worked out in two thousand words (or at least, I'm not a good enough writer to get them there!), but I wanted to start them both down a better path.

She came through the side door and her blood caught on fire at what Rez was telling her husband; she could see him only in profile, hair behind his ears, skin less red now that he wasn't putting away enough liquor to stun an elephant, those blue blue eyes of his fixed on something in a distance. It was a thousand-yard stare, the kind you saw on people who had come home from a war. For that first instant he was the only thing she could see, and then everything else came back to her and she lunged straight at Rez and punched him right in his goddamn mouth.

"You motherfucking son-of-a-bitch, you don't get to talk to him that way you piece of shit!" is what came out of Ally, and then she planted her feet because she half-expected Jack to be right behind her, wrapping his big arms around her and hauling her back against his body before she could make the situation really bloody. But he didn't, so Ally punched Rez in his goddamn mouth again, and Rez went reeling on the floor. He was bleeding now. She hoped he'd bitten his goddamn tongue right out of his goddamn face.

"Get OUT," she screamed. "Get OUT get OUT you get the hell out of MY HOUSE," and Rez showed no inclination to suddenly grow a spine because he scrambled back away from her, crab-walking until he got an arm up over the couch and stumbled to his feet.

"Ally," he said. "Ally, Ally, this is all just a misunderstanding—"

"You're _fired_ ," she said, just in case he tried to misunderstand her. "Now get the HELL OUT."

"The label—"

She punched him for a third time. He tried to bat her away, but Rez wasn't all that big and Ally had never been angrier in her whole fuckin' life; she was all over him, kicking at his knees and then trying to hit him in the balls until Jackson was finally there and lifting her away and he must've figured she'd try to bite him to get free even though she never wanted to hurt him, because he kept his hands well clear of her face. She was still spitting at Rez, but then Jack's deep voice said, "Think you better listen to her, man," and he was pretty goddamn good backup, her husband, even if he had no sense of timing, because Rez took one last look at him and got the hell out.

"Who the hell does he think HE IS," she shouted, and then she caught sight of Charlie cringing in the hallway and took a couple of deep breaths. Jackson was still all wrapped around her from behind, tense as a board, but she made herself relaxed and then felt it bleed out of him too. Not all the way, but a little. "Okay okay," she said. "I'm fine."

"Sure?" he said.

She turned around to face him. Now was when they'd usually take a look at each other and bust up laughing, unable to keep a straight face, and Jack would say something about how sexy it was when she punched other men out for him, and Ally would go off on a tear about how people couldn't treat him like that, but she was still angry right up until the point that she saw his eyes and realized he was far from laughter.

One time a while ago, before the marriage, they'd been lying in bed together watching TV, and some sad thing had come on and Ally had said, "It would kill me to lose you." Maybe it was an ad for a movie; she didn't remember that part, but her head was on his chest and her eyes were locked on the screen because they'd had a free afternoon and been too tired to do anything with it. Jack hadn't said anything at first, but about five minutes later he sighed and said, "Yeah." That was all, but the next song he wrote was a love song. You had to know him to see it, but once you knew him, it was like finally looking at a picture from the right angle to notice what the artist badly wanted you to see but was too afraid to declare nakedly.

"Jack," she said. "Tell me you aren't listening to him, tell me you didn't..."

He was like a brick wall when he got like this: shut down and far off. 

"What did he say to you?" she said, and then she demanded, "Tell me what he said to you!"

"He's right," Jack said. He wasn't looking at her; like at rehab, when he couldn't look at her, and she thought he was going to tell her some terrible, terrible thing, something that could end one of them or both of them, but instead it was shame that was choking him up, packed so thick in his throat that he couldn't talk around it. "You don't need some washed-up—" And then he cut himself off. It was all packed down in him, right in his throat and his chest. Ally remembered that feeling. She remembered that feeling from before she'd met him. It was being so beaten down, so worn out and useless, that part of you wasn't even there anymore: like being dead.

"He's not right," Ally said. "What, Jack? What? Are you going to tell me my career can't recover from having an addict for a husband? Do you really think I give one shit?"

"You should, he's gonna—you can't throw him out like that—"

"I can do whatever the hell I want, Jack!"

His eyes cut over to her real quick and then he looked away again, out the window, and he went away again, out of his head or maybe just inside it, so Ally raged over to the refrigerator and yanked open the door and poured herself a glass of water just because she couldn't look at his face. How he could be so hurt and such an asshole at the same time—it was because he was vulnerable, she wasn't stupid, but what was stupid was that she wanted to shout in his face until he understood that she was so fucking sick of hearing about her goddamn career but she wanted to do it while she had her hands on his face and maybe in his hair, her back to the door so she'd be between him and the rest of the hungry world.

"I can do whatever the hell I want," she said again, "and right now what I want is to not work with the man who told my husband he'd be a burden on me."

"You just kicked the shit out of any chance you had of staying in the label's good grace," he said, bald about it but still looking out the window.

"I canceled the rest of my tour. I'm already on their shit list."

Now that finally got him to look; he did a lot of looking away, for a man who just wanted one more look at her. "Fuckin' what?"

"You heard me."

"Fuckin'—Christ, you can't, you need to—"

"What, Jack? I need to what?"

"What the _fuck_ did you do that for?"

She'd forgotten what it was to fight with him when he had both his feet under him and could wrap his tongue around a sentence. Maybe she'd never known what that was like. "What do you mean, what the fuck did I do that for? I did that so I could be with you, you asshole!"

His jaw twitched twice, and then his whole head dropped, like he was so fucking ashamed of her he couldn't stand the sight of her.

"What, Jack? You gonna tell me that I can't do that, either?"

He mumbled, "You shouldn't."

"Oh yeah? Yeah? I shouldn't? What were you gonna do? What were you gonna do after he left, Jack? Were you gonna go on a bender? Get high?"

"No," he said. She waited, and then like someone had planted a hook in his chest and dragged it right out of him he said: "Maybe."

"We gotta, we have to get you to—"

"It's not your job to fix me, Ally!"

There were two ways this could go. She knew that; she knew it wasn't her job. She'd told him as much. What Jackson had could tear them both apart if he let it, and maybe, maybe it was her fault for marrying an alcoholic even though she'd walked down that aisle with both eyes open, informed by the memory of her mother. Maybe it was her fault he'd started drinking harder. Maybe none of it was her fault; she could never tell if she was enabling him or helping him or some other damn thing. Jack always told her she had something to say, but right now it was like someone had pulled the plug at the bottom of her and her voice had drained away. How did the words go? _I know that. I love you. Don't leave me. Don't hurt me. Don't you dare break your fucking word._

But then it turned out she didn't have to say anything, because he said: "I'm losing my hearing."

_"What?"_

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. It, uh. Concerts are makin' it worse. I..."

"Jack," she said, shocked into bewilderment. "For how long?"

"Long as you've known me," he admitted.

"Why didn't... why didn't you tell me?"

"Don't know." 

She sat down hard right on the floor in the kitchen and said, "Jesus." After a minute, Charlie came over and put his head on her knee. 

"I know I should've," he said. He was still looking at the floor, and Ally wondered if it was less because he couldn't stand the sight of her and more because he thought she couldn't stand the sight of him. That was right at the root of him—all that shame.

"Yeah, asshole, you should've," she said. "Is that what all this is about? The drinking, the drugs—"

"Guess a little," he said. "Started before that. Was only just me for a long time, but then you came along and I started dragging you down with me." A big, heavy sigh went out of him, like there was no use hiding from her anymore. "The—at rehab, they uh—" He dragged a hand over his face. "Still fuckin'... messed up over my dad. Like that's any fuckin' excuse. None of it's your fault, Ally, you cannot fuck over your career just because you feel, shit, fuckin'—sorry for—"

"You're right," Ally said, calmly, right over him, even though she had never thought there would be a point when she'd want him to just shut up. "You're right, Jack. It's not my job to fix you. You have to fix yourself. You don't want to do that, fine. If you want it, though, I'm here. I'm here, Jack. If I walk away, that's gonna be your choice, not mine. Because I love you, and you're my husband. You once told me to trust you. I'm telling you now to trust me. If you want to fix this, we can fix this. Is that what you want?"

He came around the counter so now she was staring up his nose. "You canceled your tour and beat the shit out of your manager, you can't throw—"

"Yes, Jack, I can. You wanna know why? One is that I am too fucking valuable for them to write me off over this. And two, you know what two is? You know what two is? Look at me," she demanded. "Jack. Look at me."

Took him a minute, but then he looked at her.

"You got me to sing my own songs," she said. "You got me to... you make me light up, Jack. If I lose my contract and you can't play concerts, then we'll sing a duet in the bathroom and post it on the internet. We've got enough money to last us another five hundred years, and we've got Charlie and the damn piano. If nobody listens to us, we'll just have to listen to each other. That's two, Jack."

"Is that right," he said.

"Yeah that's right," Ally said. 

He kind of crouched down in front of her even though his knees would make him pay tomorrow for squatting like that, and Charlie's ears perked up as he looked over at his daddy.

"That's right," Ally said again. "So tell me, Jack. What are we gonna do?"

He reached out to give Charlie a scratch. He was in so deep that maybe he didn't care for her offer, and she didn't know what she would do if he told her to fuck off. Take Charlie for a walk. Go stay with her dad. Write the world's best-selling fuck-you song, maybe. She had all that in her. She could be here for and with him, but she wasn't going to lead him.

"We're, uh," he said. "We're gonna have to triple the number of therapists we're seeing."

She couldn't imagine how that would go: Jack had his sponsor and a psychologist on top of it, and Ramon had talked her into seeing someone, too—she guessed there was always couples' counseling on top of that, and Christ, Jack hated seeing the shrink, but if that was his opening salvo, it was a damn good one.

"Yeah?" she said. "What else?"

"Figure I owe you another apology."

"Jack, you can't beat yourself up forever..."

"Not for that," he said. "Hell, maybe that, too. But I'll keep saying sorry until I run out of air for putting all this on you."

"Hey," she said, and this time he looked at her of his own volition. "It's okay."

"It's not," he said.

"It will be," Ally said. "All you gotta do is trust me."


End file.
